Tuesday 11 January 2022

Dungeon Keying Theory: On Background Information and Implied History

A good megadungeon (except for the purest 'funhouse' affairs) will generally have a backstory, and this can and should bleed into the contents, giving the PCs the sense that they are exploring a place with a history, whose rooms were built and used for particular purposes.

The way this typically works for me is that I begin with a broad theme or collection of themes for each dungeon level based on the overall concept for the dungeon, and then use this to map the contents based on their original purpose. I then go back and add layers of additional 'history' - including ruination, entropy, rehabitation or repurposing by intruders, and so on - to give a feeling of great age and the passing of long eons.

For example, let's imagine I was making a megadungeon inside a place called Bald Mountain. I might decide that the first level comprises a network of tunnels and chambers constructed by a cult of dwarves who worshipped the Crow God. I would map the level accordingly, and include, amongst other things, shrines, chapels, halls of worship, sacristies, monks' and novices' dormitories, and so on. I would then plot out areas that had collapsed or been ransacked; that had been taken over by vagrants; that still contained the original (undead) inhabitants; that had become infested by crow demons; that were now being used as hideouts for outlaws, and so on. And I would be careful to include room contents that, here and there, hinted at the respective chambers' original uses.

I expect most people do this when designing a megadungeon and that you will instantly identify with what I'm talking about. It's good practice, because it gives the dungeon environment depth; the players feel like they are in a living, breathing world, rather than simply interacting with something the DM has jotted down on a piece of paper, even if the truth of course is much closer to the latter. Importantly, it doesn't particularly matter whether or not, or to what extent, the PCs piece together the backstory and history of the place they are exploring - it's just better if the feeling is communicated that it has a reality of its own.  

The aim, in other words, is not necessarily to put in place enough clues that the players could, like explorer-scholars, piece together the entire history of the place they are exploring. (Though that would be cool.) It is, rather, to make it feel to them as though their PCs inhabit an actual place.

When running one's own dungeon, a lot of this 'history' takes place in the DM's own head or notes, and it doesn't particularly matter how it is presented in that sense, but in published materials, the question becomes: how much of this history should be revealed in the dungeon key, and how much should be left implicit? Compare the following:

57. A hexagonal pit, 9' deep and 6' across, lies at the end of the crawlspace. Its walls are completely smooth and it cannot be climbed unaided. At the bottom lies a skeleton, dressed in fragments of what was once a red tunic, and it can be seen to be clutching a short leather tube. Close inspection at the bottom of the pit will reveal its legs are broken in several places, and the tube contains a thin vial with a greenish yellow gas inside. If smashed, the vial will release poison into a 10' cube (save vs poison or choke to death in d3 rounds). 

with: 

57. A hexagonal pit, 9' deep and 6' across, lies at the end of the crawlspace. It was once an oubliette into which prisoners were cast for one purpose: to die. Its walls are completely smooth and it cannot be climbed unaided. At the bottom lies a skeleton, dressed in fragments of what was once a red tunic, and it can be seen to be clutching a short leather tube. Close inspection at the bottom of the pit will reveal its legs are broken in several places, and the tube contains a thin vial with a greenish yellow gas inside. If smashed, the vial will release poison into a 10' cube (save vs poison or choke to death in d3 rounds). This is the remains of an assassin who was once sent to kill the High Priest of the Crow God, but was captured and thrown into the pit after having his legs shattered by guards. He starved to death and has remained there ever since the fall of the temple.

The former seems, to my eye, to be superior, because it hints at there being a history to the dungeon without crowding out the DM's own ideas as to what it might have been. It has the virtue of being shorter. And it will also undoubtedly have the same effect on the players - the aim, remember, being to make them feel as though the place their PCs are exploring is a real one and not just a bunch of stuff to entertain them for a 3 hour session. 

The ideal for published materials, in other words, is I think to have backstory and history being for the most part implicit, unstated or hidden, rather than described explicitly. Your observations are welcome!

20 comments:

  1. I like the improved layouts and trend towards brevity in descriptions these days, but I found I also liked the extra info in the second example. If I had that info elsewhere, I’d be happy with the first example. A good example, at least for me, of conflicting aims in design, as the reminder that this is an execution oubliette and the victim was a particular assassin helps key the setting in my mind as GM. But then I haven’t ‘keyed a dungeon’ for D&D in 20 years, so am very rusty.

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    1. Interesting. Maybe I could be convinced to reverse my position.

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  2. I take your point about not crowding out the DM's own ideas, but I've run into enough published materials where there's something like this skeleton-in-a-pit and my mind just throws up a blank. What may seem like the obvious implied history to the creator just doesn't always come across, and I think I prefer a succinct explanation. I can always cut it out if something better occurs to me.

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    1. Replying to myself...I realized after hitting publish that this post is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

      Reading the first description, all my brain gave me was "I guess this was a prior adventurer? Wonder why he has a vial of poison; that's kind of random." I assumed the broken legs were from falling into the pit, which was also kind of oddly shallow for that. But DnD scenarios are full of random stuff on corpses in dungeons, so I really wasn't inspired to explain it.

      The second paragraph made me think "oh, these guys interfered out in the world enough that it was worth someone's time to send an assassin after them. Maybe this cult was like the historical Assassins, meddling with politics from their mountain fastness." I was immediately prompted to think about what the cult's goals might have been, what actions they might have taken, and who opposed them. Would it be fun to have a cell of cultists still operating out there? Or other safehouses that once belonged to them? Maybe I should put a map of the secret doors in the local lord's castle into their library for the party to find.

      Far more interesting and creatively useful to me than "make up why this stuff is in this room".

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    2. Fair enough - maybe I'm turned around on the subject...

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  3. With a few simple edits, you can get the extra info of the second passage, or enough for the DM to wing more, in the first passage:

    57. A hexagonal oubliette, 9' deep and 6' across, lies at the end of the crawlspace. Its walls are completely smooth and it cannot be climbed unaided. At the bottom lies a skeleton (former assassin), dressed in fragments of what was once a red tunic, and it can be seen to be clutching a short leather tube. Close inspection at the bottom of the pit will reveal its legs are broken in several places, and the tube contains a thin vial with a greenish yellow gas inside. If smashed, the vial will release poison into a 10' cube (save vs poison or choke to death in d3 rounds).

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    1. That's true. There's always a way to make descriptions more compact, of course. Although some reviewers can be too militant about that. The judicious use of bold and italics can make a big difference to usability even in fairly lengthy text.

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  4. I'd favour the first one. When you're running adventures with minimal prep (as I often am), you don't want much in the way of clutter that should be kept from the players.

    The great thing about situations like these is the explanation the players come up with. The GM isn't going to be able to use the assassin info (unless the PCs have necromantic powers, I suppose), so I don't think it belongs in the room description.

    That's not to say that the assassin info couldn't be useful *elsewhere* in the dungeon. Perhaps the complex contains a Chamber of Mazarbul analogue with a dusty volume containing the Chronicles of the Crow Dwarves: "Red-clad assassins crept in with vials of poison gas. But we were watchful and waiting. Most we slew. One we threw into the pit so that we might listen to his lamentations. We thought he would poison himself, but hunger took him in the end ...".

    In THAT instance, the PCs gain useful knowledge (there might be an intact vial of poisonous gas in the pit) and a motivation to explore. And they get an "aha" moment if they find the pit and its occupant, as well as an "earned" treasure - which might offer a solution to a problem elsewhere in the dungeon.



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    1. I agree with this, overall. Information is good if its usable: the background data on how X thing got to Y place is only useful if it is somehow relevant, and therefore discoverable, otherwise it should be excluded from the room description. I also favor simpler descriptions: Something as brief as "A corpse lies here, a failed assassin sent to kill the High Priest."

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  5. I'd favour the first one. When you're running adventures with minimal prep (as I often am), you don't want much in the way of clutter that should be kept from the players.

    The great thing about situations like these is the explanation the players come up with. The GM isn't going to be able to use the assassin info (unless the PCs have necromantic powers, I suppose), so I don't think it belongs in the room description.

    That's not to say that the assassin info couldn't be useful *elsewhere* in the dungeon. Perhaps the complex contains a Chamber of Mazarbul analogue with a dusty volume containing the Chronicles of the Crow Dwarves: "Assassins of the Red Brotherhood crept into the hold with vials of poison gas. But we were watchful and waiting. Most we slew. One we threw into the pit so that we might listen to his lamentations. We thought he would poison himself, but hunger took him in the end ...".

    In THAT instance, the PCs gain useful knowledge (there might be an intact vial of poisonous gas in the pit) and a motivation to explore. And they get an "aha" moment if they find the pit and its occupant (or gibbets with other red-ragged bones), as well as an "earned" treasure - which might offer a solution to a problem elsewhere in the dungeon.

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    1. Yeah, that's the thing - players come up with such great stuff when speculating.

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  6. I agree that evocation generally beats explanation. Some very brief explanation may be useful, but involved notes will likely conflict with my own campaign setting. Two megadungeons I am running that do well IMO are Barrowmaze and Stonehell, the former especially - Stonehell just has so *much* stuff, so many distinct factions - extant & extinct - it's hard to grok it all or use it all effectively.

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    1. I have never read either, but will have to someday!

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    2. Stonehell is the more impressive, its imaginative & physical scope puts the Mega in Megadungeon! I think my players enjoy Barrowmaze more, though - the art, the dark humour, the big piles of loot. :)

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  7. I'd favor an abbreviated version of the second one. In our last Barrowmaze campaign my PC cast Speak With Dead on the occupants of crypts frequently. The stories thus revealed gave us a great feeling of discovery and it added a lot to the campaign. I also think it depends on the size of the dungeon. If it is a small one I don't need much of this stuff because I'm bringing the dungeon into my existing campaign . But I will build a whole campaign around a megadungeon like Barrowmaze or Arden Vul and so this kind of detail is more useful.

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    1. Yes, I see what you mean - I think backstory used judiciously is the key. You wouldn't want none at all.

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  8. One of the joys of being a DM in an open world is that I am just as surprised as the players as to where the game ends up. The ability of the players to come up with threads linking random events are better than anything I could ever come up with.

    An option could be to start each room key with a title. In this case "Infidel's End", which helps the DM remember the location and hints at its original purpose. If your system has speak with dead, maybe add an aside, as suggested by Anon, after the description - (failed assassin of the high priest). That provides enough to riff off of, but doesn't limit creativity.

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  9. I tend to describe from the point of knowledge of the players encountering it. If they already read the tome (as described above) I would tell them the usual dimensions, and stuff, but add that this is was is left of one of the assassins, as mentioned in the book. On the other hand, when they come across it before they read the book, it will just be a bare bones description, which can give an AHA moment, once they read the book, or get the info about the assassins in another way.
    I would probably be more descriptive about the clothing (not standard for monks, or slightly different cut, or standard assassins clothing, if they had any info on that prior to stumbling across it), or about the broken bones (not the sort that you get from the slight fall into the oubliette), to hint at the actions and drama behind the find.

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  10. Alternatively you could move the additional details to an appendix with "lore and history". That seems to land in the middle ground between GMs who want to have that stuff on-hand, and ones who want to make up their own or leave it unexplained.

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